Mage
by Basia Adami
Summary: While on his first mission with Trinity, newly freed Mage decides that maybe the life of a rebel isn't for him. Instead, he wants to be free.


With a sharp front kick, she broke down the door to the apartment. Holding her cell phone against her ear with her spare hand, she gunned down a young woman. She left the corpse in a puddle of blood and brains in her pursuit of a ringing phone a few rooms away. She moved with ethereal grace and speed, never once looking back to see if the trainee was following her. He had to learn to keep up, to never gawk at the messes that were sure to be left behind.

"Hurry up," she commanded him then returned to her previous conversation on her phone. "Is this the best you could do?"

"It's the closest exit." She could almost see Tank shrugging with a smile back in the real world.

"Phone's to the left?"

"Yeah, two rooms over, then on the right hand wall. And Trinity, there's someone else in the room with it."

Her target confirmed, she bounded into the next room. Mage had no choice but to follow her. His first mission, and he was stuck with Trinity. Sure, she was one of the best the resistance had, and sure she'd been unplugged longer than anyone else on the ship except for Morpheus, but she was just so...so...he didn't know what. He couldn't read her or connect with her at all, and that bothered him. Now, he could have sworn she'd been mummified in her PVC.

He knew he looked the same way, even more so considering he was wearing white. Tank had given him a mirror in the construct and a few minutes to study himself just in case he should happen upon his reflection in the Matrix. The new recruits were always shocked and sometimes more than a little vain, as if they instantly forgot that the Matrix wasn't reality. Tank had told him a legend that had spread through all the ships. A new guy was caught by an agent because he was distracted by his own reflection. Did it really happen? Mage didn't know, but he could believe it, especially after he saw himself with a new artificial ponytail, ash blond and sleek. Somehow he found this dressed up residual self image, or whatever it was, move recognizably Mage then his real word self. He knew why Tank hadn't wasted a moment in giving him that mirror.

Mage watched Trinity dart across the room. He watched her move in a way that he could never move. He followed behind her with his hand resting on his gun. It felt so alien, so cold, so false. He knew every procedure and moves from martial arts he didn't know had even existed, but still... He caught up with her in the next room so that he entered the last room, a kitchen, a few steps behind her. His arrival was heralded by a ringing phone and a crying baby.

"Shoot it."

The child stood screaming in a corner.

"Shoot it."

The child clutched a blanket in its left hand.

"I can't."

The child started to flicker.

"It's gonna turn agent. Shoot it! Or I'll shoot you."

Trinity watched him from behind her black lenses. She watched him from behind her gun as he drew his own. He fired madly, his hands shaking, his shots missing, the baby still flickering but faster. He kept firing, his bullets hitting the walls, the cupboards, the ceiling, everything but the baby. Trinity fired a single shot through the skull, into the brain, and out the back of the head. Baby brains fell to the floor as Mage kept shooting. Bullets tore through arms, legs, and belly.

The world became red, dark red tinged slightly green. Mage was suffocating in it. The kid couldn't have been more than two years old. It was crying, but now there was silence except for the phone. It wasn't crying; it wasn't even breathing. It! It! That was a human child, not a fucking it. Boy or girl? He didn't know. The hair was too short to tell, the clothing an androgynous yellow. It had been yellow; now it dark red tinged green. It would dry to an indistinct brown, kinda red, kinda black, but mostly brown. The room would get that overly sweet scent of flesh rotting.

Mage took a deep breath and knocked on Trinity's door. He waited then knocked

again.

"Come in."

"Can we talk?"

"My shift starts in ten minutes. Be quick."

Now that he had her listening he didn't know what to say. "About yesterday, I can't do this."

"What can't you do?"

"I can't fight anymore. I won't go around pretending to be someone I'm not and shooting innocent people. I want to be done with this. I want to be me again."

"No one's innocent." She didn't know what else to say. He didn't want to fight. She tried to understand why he could turn his back on the crew who had freed him and the people who were still imprisoned. "Tell Morpheus."

"I can't, after everything he's done for me."

"Your right. He has done a lot for you, but this is your decision. You'll have to live with it, and that means telling him yourself. I'm not doing it for you." How could he be so selfish?

"What will happen to me?"

"We'll probably leave you at Zion the next time we dock. I don't know; we've never had anyone quit, at least not since I've been here."

"How long have you been here?"

"Seven years, more or less."

Mage couldn't imagine. God, he didn't think he would survive another trip inside but seven years... He could tell she would be there even longer. The resistance was in her blood and the Neb was in her bones. She would fight until she died. If he fought anymore he would be dead, maybe not physically, but every time he saw another killing, he felt himself dying a little more. He wished he could turn himself to stone like Trinity had herself. He wished it so desperately when as her eyes bore into him and reminded him just how cowardly he really was.

"You know, I want to be gracious, and I want to be brave, but I can't. I know the whole risked their lives to free me, but I don't feel free."

She didn't feel free either, not entirely free anyway. It was something she knew but refused to acknowledge.

He continued, "I want to be rid of the Matrix forever. I want to live a normal life in Zion without ever giving it another thought."

She knew it couldn't happen, not for her, not for him, not for anyone. She knew what he wanted because she had also once wanted it. You could change your name and grow out your hair, but never become someone else entirely. "You can't just be Mage without being Sam too. You're one person with two names."

She waited for him to mutter some reply in protest about leaving everything behind and never looking back, but he never did. He seemed to be mulling over her words in his mind, trying to make sense out of how he could be Mage without killing off Sam.

Finally he spoke, "'When I was a child, I talked like a child; I thought like a child; I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.' No one can be a man without having been a child first?" She didn't answer. Instead, she let him find his own. "But I still can't keep fighting."

"I won't try to keep you here against your will. Tell Morpheus, and I'm sure he can make some kind of arrangement. Not everyone can be a warrior..."

No one said a word. Mage, shifted his weight through the uncomfortable silence while his eyes wandered in their sockets. She pulled on her boots and buckled them while breaking the silence. "Anything else?"

"Uh, no," He said with a downward glance as he backed out of the room. He stopped before shutting the door and said softly. "I think we could have made it."

"Made what?"

"I know my opinion doesn't mean much, but I think we could have made it to the phone without shooting that baby."

He shut the door before she could reply. Trinity tried to brush him off. She tried to tell herself that he would change his mind, and she tried to keep from remembering the baby. Why should it bother her? She'd killed more people than she could remember. Why should this one be any different? At least this kid would never have to grow up in the nightmare of the Matrix. The baby was lucky, lucky and free. Anyway, she'd long ago learned to walk away from her kills, to leave remorse with the corpse. She didn't have time; she had work to do.


End file.
